by Bill McAllister
Denver Post Washington Bureau Chief
The Denver Post
WASHINGTON – In an extraordinary step approved by a federal judge, a computer expert hacked his way into a government-run, Denver-based financial system last summer, created a false account and later altered yet another account. All this happened without the hacker being detected.
Those steps, endorsed by U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth in advance, were revealed Tuesday as part of a court case involving the Interior Department’s handling of more than 300,000 trust accounts it is supposed to manage for American Indians.
A court-appointed master said the ease with which the government’s computer system could be penetrated was “deplorable and inexcusable.” In a report ordered released by Lamberth, the special master, Alan Balaran, called on the judge to seize control of the system.
The highly critical, 156-page report was released by Lamberth with some details deleted, apparently in an effort to keep others from breaking into the system. Among the facts omitted was the name of the Denver firm that maintains the IBM computer mainframe for the trust system.
Release of the report can only make matters more difficult for Interior Secretary Gale Norton. Lamberth has ordered her to face contempt of court charges Monday, accusing her of giving him false and misleading information about the government’s prolonged efforts to resolve the balances in the trust accounts.
The accounts, some of them more than 100 years old, hold monies that the federal government has collected for individual Indians from the sales of oil, gas and mineral leases on Indian lands.
Interior spokesman Mark Pheifle acknowledged that “problems exist” in the trust accounts and said that Interior had hired the same people who penetrated the system for the special court master to advise them on how to fix the system.
Former Denver lawyer Dennis Gingold, who represents the Indians, is scheduled to ask the judge to act immediately on the report at a hearing this morning.
“It’s disgusting and shameful that Secretary Norton and her predecessors have allowed this situation to exist and have done nothing. They should be in jail,” said Elouise Cobell, a member of Montana’s Blackfeet tribe. She is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit demanding the accounts be reconciled.
In a statement, Cobell called for the appointment of a receiver to take charge of the accounts, a move that Norton is resisting. The secretary has offered a plan to reorganize her department’s admittedly ineffective efforts to manage the accounts.
Balaran, the court monitor, said that the ease with which Predictive Systems, a computer consulting firm, was able to enter the trust account system illustrates how poorly the government has taken its responsibility to serve as a guardian of billions of dollars in Indian monies.
Previous reports had indicated serious problems with the trust security, prompting Lamberth to express alarm in 1999.
“Today, nothing has changed,” Balaran said in his report. “After 10 years of blistering reviews generated by federal agencies and private contractors, this deplorable situation is inexcusable,” he told Lamberth. “And perhaps most significantly, why was the court not informed . . . that Indian trust data was virtually unprotected?”
Lamberth has directed Interior officials to reconcile the accounts, something that the department has been unable to do for decades because of missing records and poor accounting practices.
for more information: click here
|
